


semicolon

by burymeinziam



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-26
Updated: 2020-09-26
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:40:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26656771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burymeinziam/pseuds/burymeinziam
Summary: a semicolon is used when a sentence could have ended, but it didn't; it kept going.
Relationships: Zayn Malik/Liam Payne
Kudos: 21





	semicolon

**Author's Note:**

> This is a "repost" if you will. I had originally written it years ago and after going back and re-reading a bunch of my work I decided to delete everything and go back and rewrite it.

“I want a love that kisses similes so deeply they make metaphors green with envy.”

Liam laughs, turning his head slightly so he’s focused on the thoughtful expression on Zayn’s face. “What the hell does that even mean?”

Zayn looks into Liam’s eyes and hopes he’s saying something without needing to say anything at all. He just hopes Liam knows what he means because, to be honest, the words feel too far out of reach. There are so many to choose from and they’re all floating around time and space just waiting for Zayn to reach out and grab the right ones, but he’s just no sure which ones are worth touching. 

They’re sitting in silence on a bench outside of the rusty cobble brown complex Zayn rents out because the rent is cheap enough to get by listening to the various sounds of the night interspersed amongst the noise of their own thoughts. Zayn’s eyes are trained forward soaking in the scene before them; his expression is thoughtful and Liam feels silly for asking such a foolish question. Thinking before he spoke was never one of Liam’s strong points and, even though he never said anything, Zayn knew that to be true. Whenever Zayn would become serious or lost in his own words Liam would shy away from them; crumble under the pressure or say something stupid and young. Zayn was wise beyond his years and Liam, well, Liam wasn’t. 

“I didn’t—I didn’t mean…”

“No,” Zayn says, shaking his head as he turns to Liam with a smile. It’s simple and kind and, although Liam doesn’t quite notice, a little teasing. “It’s alright; I promise.”

Liam nods, wishing things came as easily to him as they did to Zayn. Even when trying to apologize, Liam can never find the right words. Moments when he needs something that sounds mature and definite and sure. Sometimes Zayn will look at Liam as though he were undefined words on a page, the kind that children would skip over and ignore because they can’t pronounce them correctly. Zayn will look at Liam as if he wants to find him somewhere lost amongst the pages of a dictionary; look him up and pin him as a noun or a verb or something pretty like an adjective. 

“It smells like rain,” Zayn says softly, pulling Liam from his thoughts.

Liam tilts his head back and inhales a large breath of fresh air. The clouds are shifting in directions that tell stories filled with shapes and images unique to anyone who cares to read them. It makes him wonder what Zayn sees when he looks up at them. He wonders if Zayn sees something as poetic as the ideas he pens to paper. 

“Just a little,” Liam answers as Zayn leans forward, his elbows moving to rest against his knees. He stops, eyes big and bright as he turns his eyes to Liam. With the way Zayn is looking at him, Liam can feel his face growing hot and the response makes him feel so much less mature than he really is and all of the sudden he’s nothing but a naïve seventeen-year-old boy who stumbled into a small poetry reading, all lost and misguided without the slightest clue as to where he was going. And Zayn, only a mere two years Liam’s senior, seems to know so much more. Zayn is so sure of himself; knows who he is while Liam is still trying to figure it all out. 

“I want to love you in ways words cannot explain or describe; ways in which can only be whispered within the creases of crisp white sheets, held tight in secret between bedroom walls.”

Zayn leans in closer, his breath crowding Liam’s personal space and forcing him to breathe in all of Zayn’s secrets and innermost desires. Even without the touch of lips the moment feels intimate and causes chills to shoot up Liam’s spine. Zayn’s eyes are just shy of being closed when a smile tugs at the corners of his lips and he’s taking Liam’s hand and leading him across the street and up the cobblestone steps to his apartment. 

Liam can feel the first raindrop land with a soft splash against his forehead before millions follow suit just as he and Zayn make it inside. They stumble through the front door and then into the bedroom, Zayn’s smile big and warm and a little younger than usual as he pulls Liam onto the bed with him. Liam smiles back, running his fingers through thick black hair as he kisses the lips that have spoken dozens upon dozens of poems of lust and lover and worry; joy and anger and sorrow. 

Zayn has undressed Liam many times before with his eyes and with his words and with his hands. He has this way of making everything beautiful and poetic even when it isn’t supposed to be, or when Liam feels like doing so should be impossible. Zayn just has this way about him that makes him appear so much older than he really is which is one of the things Liam loves most about him. When Zayn’s fingers tracing patterns and etching nouns and adjectives into his skin, Liam feels whole and grown. He no longer feels like the inexperienced seventeen-year-old boy who’d gotten lost at a poetry reading three years ago. Liam doesn’t feel the need to apologize for all of the things that make him and Zayn so different; things like not knowing how to be kind all of the time, or best way to make coffee, or the correct usage of a semicolon. 

When Zayn kisses him it’s like he’s speaking in tongues, working his way into Liam’s soul with exotic words and phrases that make his insides swell and burst. He sighs into Liam’s mouth, rolling him onto his back as Liam combs his fingers through messy black hair that probably hasn’t been brushed in days. Zayn’s lips trail down Liam’s jaw before latching onto his beck and reciting hushed expressions with meanings only Zayn is really able to understand. Breathing feels impossible when Liam looks down and his own eyes are met with one’s writing cursive all over the curves of his body as he and Zayn make loves in vowels and heavy consonants. Liam is gripping the sheets at his sides with each push and pull of Zayn’s body against his own. They fuck until they bleed ink. Until all Liam can see is stars and shapes and letters; things he can’t begin to comprehend, but also doesn’t feel the need to. 

The bed is a mess when it’s over, but that’s the beauty in capturing the right kind of words for a great poem. It’s in the way the sheets are sagging onto the floor and the window is left open spilling all of the secrets that should have been tangled in the sheets like Zayn had described. It’s in the unspoken sentences forming between Zayn and Liam that they both recognize but don’t feel the need to say aloud. 

“Are you seriously trying to write right now?” Liam asks. His words on paper would appear harsh, but his tone is light and playful because it’s rare that he doesn’t see Zayn without a cigarette between his lips and a pen squeezed tight between his fingers. 

“Yeah,” Zayn says around an exhale of smoke, a warm smile curving on his lips before returning his attention to the weathered notebook in his lap. “It comforts me.”

“I thought I did that,” Liam replies quietly, leaning in toward Zayn to get a better look at what he had written down.”

Zayn nods, kisses Liam’s hair. “You do. Every second of every minute of every day for the past three years. That’s why it’s about you.”

Liam hums. “What’s it called?”

Zayn puts his cigarette out in the ashtray on the nightstand. He twirls his pen between his fingers, jots down a few notes at the top corner of the page. “Semicolon.”  
Liam pauses, flops down against the pillows on his side of the bed in frustration at his inability to wrap his head around the title. He’d never been good with words or grammar Not like Zayn. Liam just couldn’t ever seem to wrap his tongue around idioms and metaphors or commas or hyphens or semicolons. 

Zayn doesn’t say anything more though. It was something he was good at, something Liam had grown used to. Zayn just sets the notepad aside and settles into the bed, pulling Liam into his side and kissing him slow and soft and sweet in silent expectation of him to know why. 

“Goodnight, Liam.”

It isn’t until the early hours of the morning when Zayn is still fast asleep and dreaming in figures of speech and fancy marks of punctuation that Liam begins to realize meaning behind Zayn’s title. It starts with all of the arguments and displaced feelings they tend to find themselves in. It’s in Zayn’s unwavering, sometimes selfish, dedication to his work and Liam’s desire, but ultimate inability, to truly understand. It’s in the prose and the poetry. The sentiment and the love. It’s the true definition of the word.

A semicolon is used when a sentence could have ended, but it didn’t; it kept going…


End file.
